campaign finance: protecting people who can't think for themselves

So I just wanted to say a couple of words about the DISCLOSE Act that is currently being debated in Congress.  According to its authors, the DISCLOSE Act is designed to remedy the so-called problems created by the Supreme Court last year in their landmark Citizens United ruling.  Here is the narrative according to Nancy Pelosi:

The DISCLOSE Act is essential to ensuring that the American people – and our democracy – are not overwhelmed by special interest money and influence in our elections. In its decision in the Citizens United case, the Supreme Court opened the floodgates to unrestricted special interest campaign donations. Congress must act to ensure that the bank accounts of Wall Street and insurance companies will not drown out the voices of America’s voters. This legislation restores transparency and accountability to our campaigns, and ensures that Americans know who is really behind political advertisements. This bill requires corporations to stand by their ads in the same way candidates do, and prevents foreign-owned entities from participating in our elections. It prevents the use of taxpayer dollars to sway elections, and sets high standards for financial disclosure by outside groups seeking to influence our democratic process.

In reality the court in Citizens United said this: the government cannot penalize or prevent a corporation, union or person from spending their own money, independent from any candidate, on television ads, books, articles, movies or any other kind of speech.  The limits on the amount of money people and corporations can contribute directly to a candidate is still valid, and special interests cannot use money to bribe candidates.  All the court said was that if a corporation wished to make a commercial that addressed a particular issue or candidate, then that is their right under the first amendment.  And what is wrong with that?  Shouldn't we encourage the free flow of ideas?  In effect, the Court said that this type of speech, where the corporation is the speaker and the general public is the listener, cannot be attacked by the government.

So in effect the Democrats are scared to death that these corporations are going to have too much influence because they can explain their message directly to YOU!  For this type of communication to be a bad thing, then the dems must assume one thing: that the public is so stupid and easily misled that they cannot be allowed to hear the ads at all, lest they fall under the control of corporate brainwashing!  Seriously, they are so worried by the fact that information about candidates and issues will come from sources other than the politicians themselves that they scrambling to get an ad hoc DISCLOSE bill passed by July 4th.

There is also a great deal of obvious hypocrisy regarding both the Democrats reasoning for needing campaign finance laws and in the proposed implementation of the DISCLOSE Act.  First, Democrats claimed that the Court was flat out wrong in Citizens United and that Congress does indeed have the ability to restrict corporations from using their own funds on political ads.  According to dems, corporations are not persons and have no right to free speech.  Well according to that logic the federal government would be able to censor MSNBC, the New York Times (both owned by corporations) and even other business associations like LLCs, partnerships and closely held corporations.  This logic should be abhorrent to anyone who values the first amendment.  The reason these media companies aren't screaming out loud is that they are currently exempt from the regulations, but that could change on a whim because what Congress giveth, Congress can taketh away.  However, they are perfectly happy right now with their monopoly on reporting and presenting political issues, and want to make sure it stays that way.

Secondly, the DISCLOSE Act does a great deal to hinder who is able to present ads, putting restrictions on corporations who, although incorporated in the U.S., have at least 20% foreign ownership.  This would include thousands of companies including the likes of Verizon and Shell, for instance.  However, foreign unions such as the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) are not blocked out.  They will still be able to say what they want.  Additionally, unions would be exempt from the requirement that anyone who negotiates contracts directly with the federal government from placing ads.  That's right, now the public employees unions, who negotiate directly and often with the government over compensation, work rules and benefits, would still be allowed to place the ads despite this obvious conflict of interest.  Contrast this with a complete ban on spending by corporations who deal directly with the government.  Now personally I would be in favor of letting these groups do what they wish, but the blatant, partisan favoritism shows exactly where the democrats true intentions lie.  They are attempting to use the act for their own advantage, burdening  traditional Republican supporters, while advantaging their own.  A new era of transparency and post-political attitudes indeed.